Famous Allentown couple remember Joan Rivers as 'special'

When one-time Allentown pizza shop owner Tony Toto and his wife, Frances, were making the TV talk-show circuit in 1990, they faced tough questions and unpleasant treatment from many of the celebrity interviewers.

That was to be expected. After all, the interviews were to promote the movie "I Love You to Death," a comedy based on the story of their unlikely reconciliation after Frances was charged with trying six times to kill her unfaithful husband.

But Joan Rivers, who then had the daytime talk program "The Joan Rivers Show," stood out to the Totos for her kind treatment and comedic embrace — so much so that, after Rivers' death Thursday, the couple broke a decades-long media silence to share their feelings.

"She was a very nice person," Frances Toto said in a phone interview from the couple's Allentown home. "She was polite, she made you feel comfortable. She didn't act as if she was the star and you were nothing."

"Joan Rivers was really special to us," her husband said. "She was special. She made you feel comfortable on stage. And when you're comfortable, you talk more."

The Totos appeared on Rivers' show in May 1990 as part of a media tour that included televised interviews with Johnny Carson, Arsenio Hall, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. The movie, starring Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, River Phoenix, William Hurt and Keanu Reeves, grossed $16 million, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Frances Toto was convicted of attempted murder and spent four years in the state prison at Muncy. She later worked for The Program for Female Offenders in Allentown.

Police say Frances Toto enlisted three men, who shot her husband in the head and chest, but he survived. She later fed her husband soup laced with heavy doses of barbiturates, but it likely ended up saving him rather than killing him.

Tony Toto, now retired, said the couple didn't get to talk with Rivers off camera — it was a tight schedule and Rivers was a big star — but said they went into the show with an affinity for the comedian, who like them was a native New Yorker.

He said she even cracked jokes at their expense, asking him, "You survived?" and "You guys are still together?"

"Being a comedian, she could get away with that," Tony Toto said. "And we did not get offended by her."